Eisenman: The streetcar we desire

New Haven’s urban planning policy often operates at the cutting edge of nationwide best practices. The proposed revival of the streetcar line, highlighted in the News this week, is just one example of the grand scale of city’s newest projects. In discussing the project, however, Monday’s article (“Streetcar proposal sparks debate between city, experts”) suggested a critical dialogue between city officials and urban planning professors that simply does not exist. And by prioritizing criticisms of the streetcar line’s potential for sparking economic development, the article neglected its likely benefits.

In fact, the streetcar proposal represents an attempt to solve a problem that New Haven has been grappling with for over a hundred years: the physical and psychological distance between Union Station and downtown New Haven. In their landmark 1910 plan for the city, famed architect Cass Gilbert and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. proposed a grand boulevard extending from the southern end of Temple Street to the train station, providing a welcoming route for travelers into the city and decreasing the perceived distance to the city center. But the plan was never implemented. And in the years since, the Oak Street Connector only deepened the divide between the two areas.

When the streetcar is complete, travelers will walk out of the train station to find an inexpensive, highly visible and reliable route to the city center. While access to Union Station is currently available through taxicabs, the CT-Transit Shuttle Bus and the Yale Shuttle, a streetcar system leading to the station would streamline them into a more convenient and sustainable form of transportation that will run more often than every 15 or 20 minutes. Due, in part, to the infrastructural investment required for streetcar lines and stations, streetcars attract more riders than corresponding bus routes; there is something intrinsically more appealing about boarding a streetcar at a station than waiting for the bus on a corner Streetcars run smoothly on electricity and emit no exhaust; buses jerk riders around and create excessive noise pollution. The list goes on.

Admittedly, the economic benefits of streetcars are debated. Critics like economist Randal O’Toole, of the far-right Cato Institute, have called them “Disneyland toy[s]” that don’t attract new development. They require a hefty upfront investment, and their economic feasibility is dependent on high ridership. Perhaps development in Portland would have occurred with or without a streetcar line. But Monday’s article mistakenly portrayed the streetcar proposal as a mere cause for controversy and falsely suggested a certain ineptitude in New Haven’s bureaucracy. Professors interviewed from the Pacific Northwest ought to have been regarded as experts only on the streetcar systems in their respective cities — suggesting that they have knowledge of the New Haven system or its potential impact on economic development is unfair to the city officials and consultants who have spent months analyzing the proposal.

And New Haven isn’t Portland. Unlike the larger metropolis, New Haven’s economy is fundamentally rooted in its educational and medical institutions. This streetcar line will supply these institutions —Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital among them — with reliable access to Union Station that is not limited to Yale affiliates, as the Yale Shuttle is. Those who commute to these institutional centers from elsewhere will be more likely to take the train to work instead of driving, and visitors and patients will find the city much more accessible. The line will make working in New Haven more attractive, livable and convenient.

Likewise, the streetcar will make living a sustainable, car-free lifestyle in downtown New Haven easier and more appealing. Those who or cannot afford or choose not to own a car will have a one-transfer train connection (via Shore Line East or MetroNorth commuter rail) to job markets ranging over a hundred miles along Long Island Sound — from Old Saybrook to New York City.

In a way, O’Toole is right: Streetcars are theme park toys. But that is exactly the point. Today, cities are marketing themselves today as festive, compact, mixed-use hubs centered around transit nodes where residents can live, work and play within walking distance. Such hubs are not only good for our cities; they also encourage the behavioral changes needed to reduce automobile dependence and greenhouse gas emissions. The streetcar will extend the effects of the vibrant transit node at Union Station to apartments, shops and offices downtown.

So while the land-use-based development potential of the streetcar line may be up for debate, its potential benefits to New Haven should not be. Neighborhoods like Fair Haven, in eastern New Haven, are called “streetcar suburbs” because they grew up around streetcar lines with downtown access, not bus lines. While this first leg of the system could serve a greater immediate social need by reaching lower-income neighborhoods of the city down Whalley or Dixwell Avenues, providing the system with a secure foundation in finances and ridership by extending it first to New Haven’s crossroads downtown will prime the way for slated extensions already in the works. The bottom line is that the system will send a message that New Haven is an attractive place for investment and business relocation that also has a high degree of livability. Given the unfounded image sometimes thrust upon our city by outsiders, this kind of infrastructural investment is exactly what New Haven needs to develop to its full potential.

Comments

Sara

Streetcars are great, but in terms of bang for the buck, a citywide network of segregated bike lanes would do much, much more to spur economic development, and could easily be built for the cost of this streetcar loop.

A recent study showed that although 70% of Americans would bike if they had places to do so, only about 8% are regular bikers. There are hundreds of thousands of people living within a few miles radius of downtown New Haven – people who would easily be within an easy bike ride at a slow pace, if facilities they felt comfortable riding on were available. Contrary to your article here, central New Haven actually has a higher population density than Portland.

We already have a bicycle use rate similar to Portland here – having real bicycle lanes could put us in league with Copenhagen or Stockholm.

At the same time, we need some bike parking. The racks at Union Station, both the ones in front of as well as the ones behind the parking garage, are almost always full! This sure doesn’t make New Haven seem all that progressive.

rammedearth

Both Mr Eisenman and Sara make extremely valid points. And Sara brings up the issue of “dedicated bike lanes.” This is the bicycle variant of “dedicated right of ways” for either trolleys or buses. It seems to me that it is the dedicated quality that makes bicycle commuting safe and trolley or bus commuting practicable. Unfortunately, the map of the proposed streetcar route from Union Station to Science Hill has, in my view, a suspiciously large amount of shared right of way. Autos can maneuver, Streetcars cannot.

In addition, although I am a bike enthusiast even at 71, I am somewhat reluctant to believe that 70% of Americans would bike from as close as three miles to work even if there were bike trails as good as I am told the Farmington Canal route is. Rainy, snowy, sleety New Haven does not necessarily encourage the faint of heart. But I would encourage Mr Eisenman and Sara to continue to march–toward a future that places more effort on alternatives to auto commuting and less on increasing the speed of autos on Elm, Grove, College, and Chapel with one way traffic.

Guy Butterworth ’61

rosalinda

make sure the disabled can easily get on and off any type of public transportation – streetcars, city buses, or bikes in a bikelane.

Tanner

I think the numbers are more nostalgia then actual future riders. People think about taking a long distance train trip to Montreal, D.C and Boston but find reasons to drive. Put in a Bus/Trolley loop system and see if people use it. The State should implement a Metro-Card type system that links with all state public transportation systems. Government likes to design and talk about futuristic rail mass transportation systems yet still build and re-build road projects and proudly display there updated Roosevelt era signs.

Undergrad

Thanks so much for this article. You considered a lot of arguments that the YDN originally disregarded, and I’m disappointed at how often the YDN writes biased articles against progressive initiatives such as mass transit and wind energy.

The first portion of the line that will be built will directly connect the skyscrapers on Church Street, where many commuters work, to Union Station, meaning that people who would otherwise drive to work would be able to take the train instead, which would reduce carbon emissions while reducing rush-hour traffic on I-95 (which is an issue pretty much invisible to Yale undergrads).

I spent the summer in Oregon and the 4th of July weekend in Portland, so I’m familiar wth the streetcar system they have there. There’s actually 2 systems–the MAX Light Rail, a really extensive system with 4 lines that connects downtown Portland with the airport and various suburbs, and the Portland Streetcar, a much smaller system that only circulates through downtown Portland. The “expert” talking about Portland’s streetcars might have only been referring to the smaller system. In any case, while we can’t know for sure how much development would have happened had the streetcar system not been built, there’s plenty of reason to believe that it would lead to economic development. For example, when my friends and I stayed in Portland, we specifically looked for a hotel next to a streetcar stop, so that it would be easier to get around the city while we were there. Places near streetcar stops are ideal locations for hotels, shops and restaurants, so the proposed line would likely lead to increased development along Church and Temple Streets, and the Route 34 corridor which the city is proposing to redevelop. And the combination of increased development and accessibility could help make New Haven a more appealing destination for tourists, as well as for residents of places like Milford or Stratford looking to go out on a Saturday night.

Here’s a map of the proposed streetcar route, from the City government’s website:
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